Living the almost-DREAM

Thursday

Jun 21, 2012 at 9:00 AM

It’s almost as if we knew this was going happen. Worcester Mag’s cover story last week [“Visa for sale,” June 14, 2012] looked at recent schemes that illegal immigrants have used in the Worcester area over the past few years to gain entry into the United States and stay here – everything from marriage fraud to using H-2B temporary worker visas to help connections establish roots in the US and stay beyond their allocated time.

It&rsquo;s almost as if we knew this was going happen. Worcester Mag&rsquo;s cover story last week [&ldquo;Visa for sale,&rdquo; June 14, 2012] looked at recent schemes that illegal immigrants have used in the Worcester area over the past few years to gain entry into the United States and stay here &ndash; everything from marriage fraud to using H-2B temporary worker visas to help connections establish roots in the US and stay beyond their allocated time.

We also spoke with &ldquo;Eduardo,&rdquo; an Ecuadorian immigrant who came here with his family illegally when he was very young. Eduardo could be the poster child for a generation of young adults &ndash; anywhere between 800,000 and 1.2 million people &ndash; between the ages of 16 and 30 whose parents brought them here without papers, and who have since grown up, gone to school and even worked in America.

In Eduardo&rsquo;s case, a former student who breezed through high school and Quinsigamond Community College, he&rsquo;s lived and worked in Worcester thanks to some fortunate breaks and blind eyes. While he&rsquo;s found a job he enjoys, his ability to move up &ndash; or even laterally to another job &ndash; is severely limited.

&ldquo;I have to work but in order to work I have to have fake documents,&rdquo; he told Worcester Mag in a July interview. &ldquo;There have been opportunities where I&rsquo;ve had to give up really good opportunities at my job.&rdquo;

It&rsquo;s no controversy to say that the United States&rsquo; legal immigration laws haven&rsquo;t kept up with decades of changing industry needs and the diversity of diasporas, and it&rsquo;s no political stretch to say that the glacial pace of the system &ndash; whether that&rsquo;s getting applicants their papers or changing the visa process &ndash; has done little to dissuade illegal immigration.

The most optimistic lawyers believed the country would see some kind of wide-spread change to the United States&rsquo; immigration laws in the next four years, no matter who won the presidency, but immigrants aren&rsquo;t convinced.

&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what they said five years ago [with the failure of the DREAM Act to pass Congress],&rdquo; Eduardo lamented. &ldquo;Unless it&rsquo;s concrete, nothing&rsquo;s going to change.&rdquo;

Our story came out Thursday morning. By Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama announced changes to the country&rsquo;s deportation strategy.

According to an executive order, immigrants who came to this country illegally when younger than age 16, have lived in the United States five years consecutively, have at least a high school degree or the equivalent, have kept a clean criminal record and are younger than the age of 30 are now eligible to defer deportation and can obtain a work permit, allowing them to legally hold a job. In many states, receiving a work permit also makes them eligible for a driver&rsquo;s license.

The news surprised both immigrant communities and immigration lawyers, who weren&rsquo;t expecting action any time soon.

&ldquo;I cannot think of any reason other than political for objecting to something like this,&rdquo; says Framingham immigration attorney Kevin Leeper.

Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association says her group is &ldquo;absolutely&rdquo; excited about the policy change.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very exciting, exciting weekend,&rdquo; says Lina Nguyen, a recent Burncoat High School graduate who leads the student chapter of the Worcester Student Immigration Movement. &ldquo;This is a huge step in immigration reform.&rdquo;

Eduardo says that after work he went back and watched Obama&rsquo;s speech, understanding that the President&rsquo;s phrasing was something along the lines of &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not amnesty, but it&rsquo;s the right thing to do.&rdquo;

&ldquo;I agree with [it],&rdquo; Eduardo says. &ldquo;But it should&rsquo;ve been done a long time ago.&rdquo;

Eduardo&rsquo;s clearly anxious to see how the order plays out. In the meantime, his parents are excited that he has a chance to begin working legally in the United States.

&ldquo;If it all goes through and it works accordingly then it&rsquo;s something I need to do,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t get excited until it&rsquo;s concrete and tangible.&rdquo;

Clearly, not everyone supports the changes, not only for what the changes mean for the status of illegal immigrants but also because of the process done to enact the changes.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an end-run around Congress,&rdquo; says Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). &ldquo;Under our system of government, the legislative branch makes the laws.&rdquo;

Mehlman &ndash; like many others &ndash; decried the move as political, one that will excite the President&rsquo;s base in November without turning away less enthusiastic Democrats or independents.

&ldquo;The way to deal with illegal immigration is to make it clear they&rsquo;re not going to benefit from being here illegally.&rdquo;

In 1986 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill granting amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal immigrants already living in the United States. The trade-off, Mehlman says, was that future illegal immigrants couldn&rsquo;t receive work permits and &ldquo;government was really supposed to get tough on enforcement.&rdquo; Twenty-six years later, he says, the country&rsquo;s still waiting for that promise to be kept.

But there has been some confusion about the changes. For instance, Mehlman refers to the move as granting amnesty to those here illegally, and others have compared it to the DREAM Act, which in 2008 and again in 2010, would&rsquo;ve done the same for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country. This move hasn&rsquo;t done that.

&ldquo;This is not going to give anyone legal status,&rdquo; Leeper says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s very common to get deferred removal. &hellip;It&rsquo;s nothing new; they just decided to apply it to these folks who are very deserving.&rdquo;

&ldquo;The fact is it&rsquo;s a two year reprieve at best,&rdquo; Williams says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of a holding in limbo.&rdquo;

Nguyen says there&rsquo;s still a ways to go. &ldquo;I feel like it could go further. There&rsquo;s a lot that can be done.&rdquo;

Nguyen, a U.S. citizen herself, says her friends who are undocumented are excited, but also nervous. One is relieved he&rsquo;ll have an easier time finding a job to pay off college, which he begins at a local school in the fall. She says that while he&rsquo;s glad he&rsquo;ll be able to get a license too, he&rsquo;s more &ldquo;excited to have that legal document in his wallet.&rdquo;

&ldquo;Everyone will need to examine their own situation,&rdquo; Williams says, as no one&rsquo;s still exactly sure what the changes will look like in implementation.

&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t really change the law at all, and it doesn&rsquo;t change the dynamics of the situation,&rdquo; she adds, cautiously. With that in mind, she says some immigrants might be wary of voluntarily telling the government that they&rsquo;re here illegally.

&ldquo;These are a category of people who we want to contribute, to get an education and not live under the radar,&rdquo; Leeper says. In Worcester, a city that prides itself on its diversity, it&rsquo;s a good guess that many more residents paid attention to national politics this weekend, more than they have in recent history.

&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have to wait and see and hope it&rsquo;s what politicians promised,&rdquo; Eduardo says measuredly. But if it does what he hopes, he adds, &ldquo;then props to Obama.&rdquo;